The Full Biography
Reggie Jackson. Baseball player. The Wyncote kid who made October into a personal weather, then spent the long remainder as a straw he had already said stirred the drink.
This is his story.
The image most people still carry is a man in pinstripes, three swings, three home runs, a night in the Bronx that the country still uses when it wants to mean clutch. Mr. October. What the still cannot show is Reginald Martinez Jackson of Wyncote, Pennsylvania, a football and baseball kid who chose the A’s, a mouth that made clubhouses into weather systems, and a living Hall of Famer who has never stopped being the straw.
He was born on May 18, 1946, in Wyncote, outside Philadelphia. His father, Martinez Jackson, ran a tailoring shop and had played in the Negro leagues with the Newark Eagles. The house had a second sport in it before the son had a uniform. Reggie was a multi-sport weather at Cheltenham High — football, baseball, track — the kind of kid scouts argue about. He went to Arizona State. Frank Kush had him in football pads. Bobby Winkles had him on the diamond. He chose the diamond. The Kansas City Athletics took him with the second pick of the 1966 draft, one slot after Steve Chilcott, a catcher whose career did not become a climate. Jackson’s did. He debuted on June 9, 1967. The club moved to Oakland in 1968. Charlie Finley’s circus — mustaches, mule, arguments, a payroll run like a dare — was the first professional room that could hold him.
In 1969 he hit forty-seven home runs and sat in the country’s mouth for a summer, a twenty-three-year-old who looked as if he might catch Ruth and then did not, because the league adjusted and he did not choke up. He led the American League in strikeouts as often as he led it in damage. That was the bargain. The swing was long and violent. When it missed, it missed in public. When it hit, the ball left the yard as if the yard had insulted him. In the 1971 All-Star Game at Tiger Stadium he hit a ball off Dock Ellis that is still described by the light tower it found — a Tuesday night in Detroit that people who were there still use as a unit of measure. He was already a climate. He was not yet a dynasty’s center.
The A’s won the World Series in 1972, 1973, and 1974. Three straight. A small-market club that fought itself as hard as it fought the other league. Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Ken Holtzman, Rollie Fingers, Sal Bando, Joe Rudi, Bert Campaneris, Gene Tenace — Finley’s mustache gang, a roster that won and then argued about the winning. Jackson tore a hamstring stealing in the 1972 American League Championship Series against Detroit and watched most of that first title from the room a hurt star is sent to. In 1973 he was the American League Most Valuable Player — .293, thirty-two home runs, 117 runs batted in — and the Series MVP besides, a October against the Mets in which he hit and fielded and made the circus look like a plan. In 1974 he was in the middle of the third parade, this time over the Dodgers. The clubhouse was a bar fight with a trophy. He fought Billy North in the locker room; Fingers and others waded in and came out cut. Finley tried to move him as if a climate were a spare part. In April 1976, after a winter of threats and sales that the commissioner had to stop, the A’s traded him to the Baltimore Orioles with Ken Holtzman. He hit well for a summer in orange, twenty-seven home runs, a rented star who already knew the next room. He was already looking at New York.
The door to the civic object is a free-agent contract. On November 29, 1976, he signed with the Yankees: five years, just under three million, George Steinbrenner’s checkbook as a weather system of its own. Billy Martin was the manager. Thurman Munson was the captain. In the spring of 1977, in a Sport magazine interview with Robert Ward, Jackson said he was the straw that stirs the drink, and that Munson could only stir it bad. Munson never forgave the glass. The line is Jackson’s. The winter it made is also the file. He had not come to New York to be modest. He had come to be the center, and he said so in a sentence the city could not put back.
I didn’t come to New York to be a star. I brought my star with me.Reggie Jackson
June 18, 1977, Fenway Park, national television. Martin pulled him from right field in the middle of an inning for what the manager filed as loafing on a fly ball. They went at each other in the dugout, coaches between them, a country watching a clubhouse become a sidewalk. The 1977 Yankees were a first-place argument. They won the pennant anyway. They won the World Series because, on October 18, in Game 6 at Yankee Stadium, Jackson did the thing the nickname would be built from. He had walked in the second. Then, in three consecutive official at-bats, he hit three home runs on three first pitches off three Dodgers: Burt Hooton in the fourth, Elias Sosa in the fifth, Charlie Hough in the eighth. Three swings. Three pitchers. Three balls gone. The Yankees won 8–4. He was Series MVP. The government name survived in the record books. The public mouth replaced it with October.
The 1978 club won again — the Bucky Dent year, the one-game playoff in Boston, another Series against Los Angeles. Jackson hit a home run in that playoff game at Fenway and another in the Series. The clubhouse did not become quieter. Martin came and went. Steinbrenner stayed. In 1978 a candy company put his first name on a bar and tossed it to the bleachers; the city made a joke of it and ate it anyway. Munson died in a plane crash in August 1979, and the argument the straw line had started was suddenly a grief the city had to carry without its captain. Jackson hit. He talked. He was still the climate. In 1980 he led the American League with forty-one home runs. In 1981, a strike year, the Yankees won another pennant and lost the Series to the Dodgers. After that season Steinbrenner let him walk. The owner who had bought the straw decided he no longer needed it. Gene Autry’s California Angels took him. In 1982 he led the American League with thirty-nine home runs, a thirty-six-year-old who had not become polite, and pushed the Angels into October. He spent five seasons in Anaheim, the first man to pile 100 home runs with three different clubs — Oakland, New York, California. In 1987 he went home to Oakland for a last tour, hit fifteen more, and retired. Twenty-one seasons. 563 home runs. 2,584 hits. 2,597 strikeouts, a mountain of misses that is also a mountain of damage. 1,702 runs batted in. Fourteen All-Star Games. Five World Series titles. A .262 lifetime average that the October tape makes people forget, and should not. He did not choke up to become polite.
The Hall of Fame election came on the first ballot in January 1993: 93.6 percent. On August 1 he spoke in Cooperstown as if the lectern were another October. On August 14 the Yankees retired 44. The Athletics retired 9 in 2004. He has been, in the decades since, a special advisor, a spring-training climate, a card-show weather, a man who will still tell you what he thinks of a lineup. Living. The drink is still stirred when he walks into a room.
The turn is the Yankee contract, and the decision to be a climate on purpose. A lot of great hitters vanish into a lineup. He announced the lineup. Fond memory that keeps only Game 6 is a cleaned room. The A’s years, the strikeouts, the clubhouse, the long advisor remainder — those are the life.
Six things most people never knew
- The father played Negro league ball and cut cloth. Wyncote. A shop. The Newark Eagles. A second sport in the house before the son had a uniform.
- The first dynasty is Oakland, not the Bronx. Three titles before the pinstripes. 1973 league MVP and Series MVP. He missed most of the 1972 Series on a hurt leg.
- The straw line cost him a captain. Sport, spring 1977. Munson. A glass. A winter that never fully thawed.
- Game 6, 1977, is three first pitches, three pitchers, three balls gone. Hooton, Sosa, Hough. A night that ate a government name.
- The strikeouts are a mountain next to the home runs. 2,597. Thirteen more misses than hits. He did not choke up to become polite.
- He is still in the rooms. Advisor. Opinion. The drink still moves when he enters.
He has children. He has had the public life of a man who does not sand his sentences. Friends from the A’s and the Yankees describe a teammate who was first in the cage and last to stop talking — who took the extra batting practice as if the night were always coming. The Jackson at a spring-training complex is a man who has already been a climate and is now a clerk of October. Both are the life.
The later years
The plaque did not send him home. After 1987 he stayed inside baseball the way a man stays inside a language he helped write. The Yankees put him on the payroll as a special advisor; Steinbrenner, who had let him walk, wanted the straw back in the building. He has worked camps, sat with young hitters, walked clubhouses in a lanyard, and given the same un-sanded sentences to cameras that still need Game 6. He has also worked rooms the Yankees do not own — card shows, dinners, a candy-bar nostalgia that still produces a “Reggie!” wrapper when a producer wants 1978. He has endorsed, appeared, argued on television about modern slugging and modern money. He did not become a quiet elder. He became a living footnote who refuses to be only a footnote.
Cooperstown in 1993 was a coronation he treated as another stage. He thanked the father who cut cloth. He thanked the A’s and the Yankees and the Angels. He did not pretend he had been easy. The monument in Yankee Stadium’s park, the 44 on the wall, the 9 in Oakland — those are the civic objects. The daily work has been smaller and longer: a man in his sixties and then his seventies who still wants to be in the cage when the kids take batting practice. He has sat in spring with young outfielders and told them, without sanding the sentence, what October actually feels like. He has had health scares the papers noted and he did not tour as a patient. He has had public disagreements with clubs and with the way the game now spends money. He has not retired his opinion. The opinion is part of the method.
The Yankees kept him close for decades, then less close, then close again, the way a franchise handles a man it cannot file as only a clip. He has appeared on the YES Network. He has walked Monument Park with tourists who were not born when Hooton threw the first of those three pitches. He has sold the signature at shows and has also refused to become only a signature. Oakland still claims the first three titles. Anaheim still claims the 1982 summer. The Bronx claims the night. He will not pick one room and stay in it. That refusal is the remainder.
Documentaries still need the three swings. October still rents the clip. He will watch it if asked and will also tell you about 1973, about Finley, about the night in Detroit when the ball found the light tower, about the mountain of strikeouts he has never apologized for. A living Hall of Famer can become a waxwork of his best night. Jackson has refused the wax. He still arrives as if the drink needs stirring. He is in his late seventies. The night is a clip. The straw is the method. Wyncote is the first room.
He has not had to die for the country to start the argument about what he was. The argument is already complete and still open: five titles, 563, a mouth, a captain wounded, a night that will outlive everyone who saw it. He walks into rooms. The rooms still change temperature. That is the remainder in progress. It is not a retirement. It is a man who brought his star and has not yet agreed to leave it at the door.
After the spotlight moved
It moved to the next October hero and then came back every October. Steinbrenner still arrives in the same sentence. Munson still arrives. The sentence is the right argument. Oakland is the correction. The shop in Wyncote is the first file.
He came out of a tailor’s house, won three in Oakland, said the straw line, hit three in one Bronx night, struck out a mountain, and stayed in the rooms. If you only remember Game 6, you have the still. If you remember Finley, Munson, 563, and the shop, you have him.
Portrait: Unknown author · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons